EJustice

Use of talk pages

I have tagged two talk pages for deletion as they had no matching articles. Both appeared to be related to your course. May I suggest that work in progress is managed in user sandboxes and then drawn on as neccesary during article editing. Your sandbox is at User:EJustice/sandbox. Thanks  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   03:23, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia Neutrality Guidelines

Namaste. I would like to remind you of our policies regarding neutrality of content, and request if your pupils are contributing to this project that California1990, GAA8423 and yourself ensure pupils' contributions also adhere to neutrality guidelines before publishing Drafts in Main article namespace -- such as this one -- and further be reminded that Wikipedia is not a platform for advocacy, point-of-view pushing or a repository of opinionated essays -- rather than saying such unwanted contributions are a "great job" on the talk page.

Language on the Wiki Edu course page itself raises serious concerns about instructors' ability to conduct yourselves in a neutral manner. If one desires to malign others, do so elsewhere. Otherwise it may negatively affect pupils', your own and the institution's participation in the project going forward. -- dsprc ^[talk] 21:17, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Your input above strikes me as gratuitous, meaning unsupported by fact. Feel free to point to actual text that represents non-neutrality or maligning of others. Please also reflect on how much you are violating Wikipedia's own expressed guidelines for avoiding systemic bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias#What_you_can_do). --EJustice (talk) 18:44, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

One is of course free to ignore sage advice to their own detriment. WikiEd page violated WP:BLP -- some offending material has been removed by other contributors before ultimately being resolved upstream. WP:COI also applies, as you've a financial-stake: after UCB riots, Trump questioned Federal funding for UCB.[1] WP:Systemic bias is an essay written by fellow contributors, not a policy page (although it is something we should collectively address with outreach and understanding). Before waving that about, one may wish to check their own privilege, Professor. -- dsprc ^[talk] 23:43, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

April 2017

Hello. This is a message to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions, such as the edit you made to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, did not appear constructive and has been reverted. Please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at our welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make test edits, please use the sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page. Thank you. Black Kite (talk) 23:30, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Your ANI post was reverted

You seem to have accidentally copy/pasted a large swath of text from the archives in order to reply to it. I have made the necessary adjustments and reposed it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Re:_POV_Forks --Tarage (talk) 23:39, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

the POV thing

I don't want to tell you how to run your class, but I think that creating new articles is harder then existing editing ones. One of the guidelines for naming articles is that the names should be "natural" as in names that other editors would link to "naturally" in the course of their editing. Another issue is new articles should be categorized and not orphan articles. There are some WikiProject pages where you can find existing Start/Stub class articles that need expansion like Superfunds/Assessment and a number of others you can find through Portal:Environment Also, I am not sure if you are aware, and this is not a formal DS warning, but any articles that are about American Politics post-1932 should technically be in the ARBAP2 area and subject to discretionary sanctions and AE - especially POV-forking Trump-related articles will be difficult. Systemic bias is an essay, so it may help to familiarize yourself with wikipedia policies if you are interested in this area. Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:34, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions...I'd love your advice on the tension our students face between subsuming their work under an existing article and creating a new one. I understand why the former is easier than the latter, but how can we increase the odds that people who need the information can find it? for example, if the students are writing about environmental justice in a particular coal-mining area of the US, there are insights for coal mining communities around the world. So should they put their work under Appalachia/#CoalMining or Coal Mining? Strikes me, as a relative novice, that the likelihood of being found is higher if the page stands alone...something like Social and Economic Impacts of Coal Mining. There's a tension between ease of editorial acceptance and find-ability/use-ability? no? I think your insight about categorization can help with that as well.

On Systemic Bias...I now understand the point about it being an essay. Are there any policies to address it or has it remained a "thought piece"?

Thanks again! --EJustice (talk) 16:03, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

My opinion on systemic bias is that the essay is about editorial diversity. There are a number of things that can make editing Wikipedia very frustrating. As a consequence, we have noticed there are fewer female editors then men, for example. We are concerned that the relatively lower numbers of female editors may create biases in certain areas of Wikipedia - like women's history. But individual editors will still have to discuss their edits on talk pages applying policy - the policies that are discussed most often are WP:RS WP:V WP:OR and WP:DUE.

As for Coal mining, what I recommended on the AfD was to rename the page to "Coal Mining in Appalachia" - a quick google search brings up numerous sources that are about coal mining in this specific region. These sources are not only about environmental justice - they include technical information on surface mining techniques, women's history about female miners, economics, etc. The page should not be limited to environmental justice issues.

The best way for pages to be found is for them to be linked to from other pages. I have noticed a number of the student created pages at issue are also WP:ORPHAN pages - this would actually decrease the likelihood of being found. Seraphim System ^(talk) 16:55, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! I've passed this advice onto our students. --EJustice (talk) 18:16, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

For dealing with systemic bias, we've many ongoing outreach and user retention efforts. For example, the page layout of WP:Teahouse has proven statistically significant at retention of females and new contributors. Likewise The Wikipedia Adventure and (often controversial) VisualEditor. Coordination is conducted on META, where one can also find information about global Wikimedia affiliate organizations, user groups and so on. -- dsprc ^[talk] 21:02, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Threading comments

You have opened a thread at ANI, and discussions there get pretty complicated.

There are two essential things people need to do in discussions so that others can make sense of the discussion as they read it. One of them is signing comments, which you already are doing.

The other is indenting. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon ":" in front of your comment, and the WP software converts that into an indent; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons "::" which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment.

If someone else has already responded to a comment, and you want to respond to that comment as well, you put your comment under the already-existing response, and indent the same amount as the first responder (same level of indenting).

I hope that all makes sense. I know this is insanely archaic and unwieldy, but this is the software environment we have to work on.Jytdog (talk) 20:53, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Additional information and examples can be found at WP:Indentation. -- dsprc ^[talk] 21:00, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Copy/paste

Putting this here so as not to disturb Diannaa that much more: yes, I don't think there was any malicious plagiarism involved, but I remember having a conversation with one of my grad student friends at a peer institution to Berkley about how easy it is even for PhD students to unintentionally do a close paraphrase or think a footnote was all that was needed when quotes would also be required. Basically the two students I pointed out did a copy/paste from government sources and thought a footnote would suffice. For the FDA one, it matters a lot less on Wikipedia for copyright because it was the federal government. The San Francisco Public Lands (or parks, don't remember exactly now) I couldn't tell if they were governmental or not, but it didn't really matter because they had a copyright logo on their website, and to be honest, it would have been very awkward writing stylistically if they had quoted it since it was a direct pull.

I'm also about to reply to a student from your class on the Trump policy article. Sorry that that one had to have so many revision deletions, but we caught it very late in the game. Anyway, the main reason I noted it to you was because of the "teaching moment" part on how easy it is to plagiarize in an academic setting in case any of your students wanted to move beyond a BA. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:29, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this note and for your examination of the pages you've looked at. Do you think it's a good rate that only 2-3 copyright violations occurred out of 180 new editors? Or is that still too high a fail rate? (trying to give ourselves a grade (:-)

Also, I understand from your comment above that the 2 copyright violations on the Environmental Policy of Trump page were a) from the FDA and b) from San Francisco Public Lands/Parks. Is that correct, or were the copyright violations from other sources? Thanks again!--EJustice (talk) 03:39, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Copyright violations on Trump were from the Washington Post and National Geographic. They were citing figures if I recall (I can't see the text because I am not an administrator), but the wording was so similar in terms of word order and syntax that when I queried Diannaa about it she thought it worth revision deleting as a copyright violation, and she is the expert on this type of stuff.

At Open Space Accessibility in California Aylapeters copied word for word from a flier about a program that San Francisco Parks had going on with only a footnote. The website had a copyright symbol on it, so we treat it as a copyright violation.

At Environmental impacts of animal husbandry in the United States Sgberkeley19 copied two sentence from the FDA. Typically this is not a copyright violation, because United States Federal Government works are in the public domain. Where I've done my academic work, it would be considered unintentional plagiarism, however, because it was a word for word from the FDA with only a footnote. If it hadn't been a federal government work, it would likely have constituted a copyright violation.

In terms of grading, this is the first WikiEd class I've checked for copying on, so I can't really grade it. As an aside, I did find a political candidate plagiarizing from Wikipedia while doing the cleanup on this, so that might make you feel better :-) TonyBallioni (talk) 04:05, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you!EJustice (talk) 05:39, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

TonyBallioni Slept on this issue, and trying to be able to explain this to the students. You're saying that the students paraphrased the Washington Post and National Geographic? That may be a form of plagiarism, but unless it was more than a few dozen words it easily meets criteria for fair use and generally not considered a copyright issue, particularly when for a non-profit/educational purpose (Wikipedia:Non-free content). Wish I could see the history here, but did you try to flag the issue for the students? Did they respond? From the perspective of having good content and the marginal nature of a potential copyright violation if in fact paraphrasing was involved, I think it would make more sense to ask for editorial revisions, no? EJustice (talk) 18:17, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

EJustice, if I remember correctly, the Washington Post example had some additional words, but there was word for word copying involved. National Geographic also had additional words, but copying throughout. I called it close paraphrasing when asking Diannaa about it because I like to assume good faith and give as much credit to someone where it is due, but her view of it was that it was that there was 4-6 total sentences copied, and I trust her judgement on this implicitly. My post here was intended as a courtesy to let you as an instructor of an academic class know where there were issues with attribution and copying that had to be corrected and in some cases redacted. The reason the revisions cannot be restored is because by clicking "save changes" you are releasing the text under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL (you can see that in the edit window). By making the content available publicly, Wikipedia would be claiming all the text in the article was free text. That makes displaying any revision with copyrighted text in it against our policies. I am not an administrator, so I can't restore the text for you, but that explanation is along the lines that most admins familiar with our copyright policy would give. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:41, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

ya...I can see how word for word copying is a problem. Thanks!EJustice (talk) 18:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Not a problem. Like I said in my first post, I do not believe any of this was intentional, but generally an administrator would not delete 128 revisions of an article unless they were convinced it was justified under policy. Its not desirable (as you are finding out), but unfortunately often necessary to comply with our copyright obligations. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:09, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

TonyBallioniYou suggested revision deletions that were made on this page as well because of copyvios...But the material involved is under CCL, making the use of the material completely legitimate. What should we do about this? Thanks!EJustice (talk) 17:35, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, and sorry for the mistake on that bit of text. I've replied on the talk page. The revision deletions also had text from CNN there as well, which was the first bit I caught. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:45, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

TonyBallioniNo problem. What's really the norm here, given that short snippets of text in a non-profit context are a) fair use, and b) the norms given by Wikipedia are this? Our students I think are in a catch22 here...attacked for mentioning race and class as being POV and then deleted for copyvio when they use neutral sources to mention race and class. Could you or other editors simply correct the quotation issues when you run across them rather than blanket delete whole edit histories? Thanks!EJustice (talk) 17:57, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

The issue is that none of the problems that I found and removed had quotation marks and most of them were word for word and did not comply with the policy you linked to. While it is possible to rewrite content in our own words, it wouldn't remove the need for revision deletion on the revisions where copyrighted text was included improperly. I'm really am sorry for the mistake on EESI–I promise you that I went through to verify licenses anytime the tools turned up copied text, because there were several things from other free sources that I didn't remove, as this proved, I am certainly fallible. To put the article in question in better context: I discovered the CNN verbatim copying first, and had requested revision deletion based on that before I found the EESI text.

I'm not trying to pick on your students here— I frequently patrol new pages for content and copyright, and I've actually quite enjoyed getting to work with them on the Trump article. My advice to them in terms of writing and avoiding copyright issues would be this: treat Wikipedia no differently than if this were a paper in the class with a professor who was known for being able to sniff out any copying. That would solve a lot of issues and serve them better for their longterm academic career. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:19, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this and I'm really trying to understand...without quotation marks there is no option but to delete copyrighted material? -- they can't be added post-facto because the prior revisions still represent copyright violation by dint of lack of quotation marks? I think I get it, but I'm going to run this scenario by some other folks because it seems black and white where perhaps gray is more appropriate. For example, copyright with a citation but missing quotation marks seems like a typo or a step in the edit process (say, for example, your doorbell rings. you hit save and come back an hour later) not a violation. I think we've taken up enough of your time on this!

On the plagiarism front, there isn't a major university where assignments aren't now turned in via a plagiarism detection system. So the students are pretty aware/trained up. This kind of stuff is usually an interim draft issue. Thanks again! EJustice (talk) 18:48, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Direct verbatim copying presented as an editor's own words with only a footnote is not allowed, because the editor is representing that they own the copyright to these words and are licensing them under Wikipedia's licenses. Close paraphrasing that only superficially changes the text might also be in violation of our copyright policy as well. These can and should be removed from the article. Students are free to add the information back in their own words and cited correctly, or back as limited direct quotations in accord with our non-free text usage policy. All revisions where copyrighted text that is not compatible with Wikipedia's licenses are generally deleted from public view under our revision deletion criteria. This is because Wikipedia represents that the text in all of the previous revisions of the page is freely licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 and GDFL. No one particularly likes revision deletion, because it prevents seeing what exactly is changed, but it is seen as a necessary evil to be compliant with our copyright policy.

On the plagiarism front, I'm using the professor who is strictest about plagiarism example as a good rule of thumb for how to avoid these issues entirely. If you quote everything you copy directly, and make sure to use your own words and cite when you don't quote, you are much less likely to run into trouble. It is also just generally better writing. Hope that helps. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Some more contentious stuff worth meditating over

Moved the most contentious stuff here

Students

Hey. Some of your students are struggling with consistently using high quality sources. For medical content we follow WP:MEDRS especially when the topic is controversial. Let me know if you are interested in chatting further.

For example here the IARC is great but the in-vitro studyt of bovine luteal cells is not. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:02, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Really appreciate your help and input. It's a bit of a crazy week for me so please forgive me for not reaching out any more about it this week...EJustice (talk) 00:02, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

User:EJustice/WP Policy and Environmental Justice Class

Discretionary sanctions enforcement filing

Please see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#EJustice Jytdog (talk) 18:31, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 20:10, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Some more effort ....

I just want to try to communicate this to you. By now I am not sure you can hear anything from me, but I want to try...

I value NPOV in Wikipedia very deeply. My userpage goes on ad nauseum about this. One of the big reasons why I value it, is that Americans have by and large retreated into social media bubbles, and people are more and more walking around in different universes, with almost no overlapping sources of information about the world. It is an insanely ambitious dream that this crowdsourced encyclopedia could be common ground that everybody could rely on to find "accepted knowledge" about the world. In many topics we come close to doing that; in many places we fail horribly. In too many places in WP, advocacy is blatant, and this harms all of Wikipedia and damages its trustworthiness.

At this moment in American history, yes it would be amazing if WP had way more truly NPOV content about environmental justice. I see the valid spark in your idea for the class work.

To pull off that project, you and your class would have had to have been extremely rigorous to leave out any hint of advocacy, especially on these topics which are indeed so loaded, as you have noted.

But instead, people in your class added essay-like content that violated several policies in order to make arguments that advocated for environmental justice and against Trump. Again, you encouraged them to do this, did nothing in WP to curb it, fought efforts to remove bad content, and encouraged students to resist as well. So many students!

You are going to find many Wikipedians who are angry about this on a bunch of levels (including putting your students in such a bad position, where they had grades on the line.. which the Education Program strongly advises against).

The world needs people out there advocating for environmental justice. Wikipedia needs editors who understand the environmental justice literature who write truly NPOV encyclopedic content summarizing that literature and its context. Those are two very, very different activities. At some point I really hope that you can see this and how your class mashed these two together. Jytdog (talk) 01:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Explanation about what is happening

I also wanted to explain what is happening now with regard to your presence in Wikipedia, as you don't seem to understand. Again, I hope you can hear this.

This is indeed "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit." At the same time, there is a kind of "rule of law" here in Wikipedia, which is what has allowed this community to persist and to build this encyclopedia over the last 16 years.

The way that works, is that editing privileges are extended to everybody. Like all privileges, these come with responsibilities. Everybody who edits agrees to learn and abide by community policies and guidelines. This is part of the Terms of Use that you "sign" every time you save an edit (open an edit window, and look down, to what it says just above the "save changes" button).

Editors who establish a pattern of violating the policies and guidelines can and do have their editing privileges restricted or removed. This is described in the WP:BLOCK and WP:BAN policies. This is what is happening now with regard to you. If you are indefinitely blocked, this will extend to anybody acting at your direction, which includes TAs and students in future classes. Folks are worried that you would not honor such a restriction. I hope you would.

But right now, most everybody is looking at the pattern of what you actually did here in Wikipedia over the last few months and what you say you intend to do in the future. Generally, people at AE and AN are skilled in this and know how to look at diffs and see patterns. People at AE and AN also understand very well that people often are unaware of (and even sometimes misrepresent) what they have actually done; people do this all the time. Humans are messy.

The diffs are everything, and the pattern of what you have actually done as demonstrated in diffs, is pretty clear. We will see where the AN discussion goes, but it is trending toward an indefinite block.

That would be appealable. The key to any appeal would be two things -- acknowledging what you did, and giving folks confidence that you won't put us through what happened last semester again (both things are important). If you can do that, then people (including me) will relent and the block would be lifted. We want to grow the community and we know that everybody needs time to learn. You could probably stop the indefinite block from happening, but to do so you would have to post something very different than what you have posted so far. I don't believe that you see what happened yet, so I don't expect any surprise posting from you. I am hopeful that during the summer debrief, you will see it, and can appeal after that.

The case with you is so hard, since it was not just you but your direction of a whole class, and because you have been so obstinate that there was nothing going wrong with the student's work or your direction of it. So hard.

Anyway, I hope that explains things somewhat. Jytdog (talk) 01:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

This was not what was needed, as even EdChem noted. Please stop doubling down - it is making things worse for you which means for everybody. Nobody is enjoying this. Jytdog (talk) 14:36, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

What's also happening is that anyone who interferes with the chemico/medico-/bio-technology agenda on Wikipedia will meet with endless reversions, wiki-lawyering, harassment, etc., as I discovered several years ago when I detected and attempted to challenge the systematic manipulation of articles about genetic engineering. Perhaps this experience will itself be an interesting lesson for your class. I'm not saying there aren't problems with student-submitted work, but the reaction will undoubtedly be unique when it strays into this domain. Cheers, groupuscule (talk) 04:43, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Indefinitely blocked

Following the discussion at WP:AN#EJustice matter, you have been indefinitely blocked by community consensus. Fram (talk) 08:30, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

• Following on from your block, the only place a conversation can take place is here. Are you still interested in a discussion? EdChem (talk) 09:54, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

EdChem I am. I do need the conversation to be limited to perhaps you and I and folks from WikiEdu (although I believe they will not participate). I believe that a number of editors who aggressively pursued a ban will use our discussion to further aggravate the situation in venues where I cannot defend myself or the students' work because of the block. Any way to do this? One way is to proceed very slowly with perhaps a commitment from you to protect our ability to discuss openly without fear of being quoted/diff-ed out of context. By going slowly you can gauge how much time you have to spend doing this. I am VERY experienced in the kinds of emotion work on environmental justice engenders, so I don't want you overwhelmed by the task of keeping the conversation civil. I think this will be informative and fun, and I look forward to it though. Just want to be sure we can do it right. Thanks! EJustice (talk) 02:05, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Ok, on preventing other participating, there is no technical way to do that. However, as it is your user talk page, you may refactor or request others stay away. I suggest we set up a section with a notice asking that no one else edits it, and below it a "talk" section for others to comment, which is for comments that either of us may reply to or not. If others do comment elsewhere than this page, you can request a response be posted there, though whether anyone will post it is not certain. A couple of things to consider:

1. When are do you have the time to spend on this, within your schedule?
2. What do you see as the topics we need to cover? There are a few that occur to me that are about WP editing and unconnected to the EJ topic (about which I know little, to be honest), and I think those are wiser places to start

You are correct that I have limited time and so a slow process is likely appropriate. EdChem (talk) 02:53, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

EdChem I have the time to engage in a couple of pieces of dialogue every week starting anytime. The nice thing about being online is that the asynchronous nature of the conversation automatically creates some of the space needed to unpack harder issues. Slow and step by step is good!

I'd like to start by building my understanding. I can think of three broad topic areas:

A. My behavior...

1. In your view, what are the reasons for the block? (stack ranked ideally) As I think you know lots of reasons given, none really clearly identified as higher or lower priority. It would be great to get your experienced view of the key "charges." I won't hold you responsible for others' views and, of course, I'd guess that they will be sorely tempted to weigh in with their own prioritization. But I'd rather focus on yours as a simplifying strategy.

2. What behaviors did I engage in that violated WP policy or culture? same caveats as for question 1.

B. Students' behavior and interactions with WP editors...

1. How badly did students violate WP rules and policy if at all? My sense here is that, because of the community's perception of their topic and/or my behavior, they were accused of POV and subject to rapid deletion and harsh critiques, rather than discussion and good editing by the community.

2. How badly did non-student editors violate WP rules and policy if at all?

C. The role of the topic itself, environmental justice, in coloring how this played out....

1. My sense is that a big piece of what happened here has to do with a fundamental distaste and/or misunderstanding of environmental justice as a field of knowledge and inquiry with similar coloring for discussions of racism and discrimination. For example, does any discussion of environmental justice automatically fall under discretionary sanctions of post-1932 American politics? If so, why? You don't need to know a lot about this, but it would be worth looking at the nature of the edit histories and rationales deployed on articles to illuminate this.

2. How to create neutral information that serves real people not traditionally thought of as Wikipedia users? Obviously all information serves somebody, but my sense again is that knowledge that serves people not traditionally understood to use an encyclopedia (perhaps because they know they are not supposed to for various reasons) can trigger a reaction by those who've defined the boundaries and appropriateness of its use. Here we could discuss a few hypothetical or real scenarios.

I'm open to any other ideas. If you like my outline, can you start us on topic A (my behavior)? I doubt we'll be "allowed" to discuss C, so let's leave that to last. Note that, from my perspective, this is a tough environment -- We start exploring our conversation (not even having it) and an editor has already jumped in to limit it, and another has expressed skepticism that it could work at all. As we start the conversation about what went wrong, we are reminded that my talk page is "not a free space where [I] can discuss whatever [I'd] like or whatever people would ask [me]," presumably because there's some hint of that already? Not sure we'll get very far under such reactivity/strictures, but let's try.

Finally, I AM concerned about our discussion being rehashed in venues where I am blocked, as has already started to happen even though we're not even getting to the meat of the matter yet. If that happens, can we take this off-Wiki for a bit? Any other ideas? Thanks!EJustice (talk) 16:53, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for responding. I am about to go out, I have a very busy rest of my day and will be in hospital tomorrow, so I am not sure if I will get back to you tonight or not. I will reply as soon as I can. EdChem (talk) 00:55, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

EdChem No worries...take your time and I hope your day went as well as possible today. EJustice (talk) 21:33, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Please note that during the block, this page should only be used to discuss the block and a possible unblock (discussing restrictions, ...), not things like E-justice articles, the work of students, ... Fram (talk) 08:07, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

I have discussed this with Jytdog on my talk page, so for clarification: discussing what went wrong, where community norms and expectations differed from your actions or comments, how to avoid a repetition of the problems or the situation in the case of an eventual unblock... fall under the "discuss the block and a possible unblock": reviewing the work of students, undeleting their work to grade it, or more general philosophical discussions are not the purpose of a talk page during a block though. The intention is not to take away talk page access at the first potential problematic edit, but to make the boundaries somewhat clearer and to indiicate that this is not a free space where you can discuss whatever you'ld like or whatever people would ask you. I hope this is a bit clearer now. Fram (talk) 13:08, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

EdChem Hi! I hope all went well earlier this year. Are you still available to have this conversation? I'd love to get started now. Thanks..EJustice (talk) 16:58, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi EJustice... my year hasn't really gone as anticipated, unfortunately, and my time on WP has been pretty low lately. However, I'm willing to give the conversation a try and see where it goes. My apologies in advance that I may not be quick to respond at times. EdChem (talk) 21:13, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

EdChem Alright...made it through the year end festivities and stuff. Shall we get started? You had suggested creating a section/re-factor to encourage folks to let us dialogue without interference. I'm not great at Wiki-editing, so could you do that first? Then, what are your thoughts on the A.B.C. questions I posed as a structure above? If you agree, let's start with A. I can review the charges that led to my blocking and attempt to summarize them and respond to them and then you can correct/help me understand them. Does that make sense as a way to proceed? Thanks! EJustice (talk) 23:42, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

EdChem Hi! Are you still willing to play this role? I'd love to get started. Thanks! EJustice (talk) 17:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

EJustice I'm happy to give it a go.  :) EdChem (talk) 05:42, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

EdChem Back from some travel...Can you do the re-factoring you mentioned above (I think creating a sub-page on this talk page? Then I'll paste in the conversation outline I suggested above (A,B,C) and some pointers to discussion histories of this case that I'd like to understand better through this dialogue, and we'll get to the conversation! Thank you so much again for being willing to do this with me!EJustice (talk) 19:02, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

EJustice, I would like to use a sub-page but we can't. As you are blocked, the only page that you can edit is this page, user talk:EJustice. If I created the sub-page and you edited with an IP address or another user account, you would be violating policy on block evasion. You are on the right track towards being unblocked. Allow me to advise that block evasion by editing as an IP or creating another account is viewed very harshly and would torpedo an appeal and potentially lead to a stronger sanction, so it is important to respect policy in this regard. I'm not suggesting that you were thinking of block evasion, I just want you to know how seriously it is viewed.

Having said that, I will set up some structure below so we can get started. Fell free reformat it or suggest changes to it if it doesn't suit what you are thinking. Cheers! EdChem (talk) 22:32, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

user talk:EdChem Sounds good...EJustice (talk) 22:44, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

What's going on

Per your comment above, you seem to want to appeal your block. I'm leaving this note as a courtesy since you haven't been responded to. If you want to appeal this, it would need to be lifted by the community. I cannot promise I would support it, but I would be willing to copy it to an admin noticedboard. I suggest that if this is your intent that you highlight at least the following things:

1. What you would plan to do when you are unblocked
2. What you view as the cause of your previous block
3. How you will address the concerns of the community concerning NPOV
4. How you will address the concerns of the community surrounding academic integrity and copyright

I will also notify Fram, EdChem, and Jytdog I've made this post. Again, I cannot guarantee I will support an unblock, but since you seem to want to get the process going, I thought I would give you a format to do it in. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:16, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

fwiw Tony, back when all of this was happening, Edchem made the following offer at AE here: Wikipedia can be a jungle of overlapping policies and guidelines with unexpected pitfalls, and it can also be very unfriendly. I admire your courage in trying to do a 180 student project as your first foray onto WP, it was brave... but, to be frank, it was not wise. The design you chose was always going to conflict with how Wikipedia operates, and I could point out how many of the problems could have been avoided. I would be willing to have the discussion in a sub-page of your user space, because I think what I would say is relevant to others and I prefer open communication... but I would also be willing to ask that other users not comment in the discussion, restricting their views / comments etc to the talk page. I would also be willing to include Ryan from WikiEd, if you like, and to delay it until after the assessment etc is dealt with (Ryan will be very busy until summer anyway). Please let me know what you think.. I think that EJustice was trying to initiate that conversation, and nothing more. Jytdog (talk) 22:42, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: Thanks for providing a response, but I think Jytdog is correct that EJustice was wanting to pick up from the discussion from a while ago. I hope that EJustice is not contemplating an appeal at this time because the AN thread was heated and I doubt that he would be well received without some tangible discussion addressing the issues that you have mentioned above. Kind Regards, EdChem (talk) 21:18, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Comment from uninvolved editor: I came across this just today, following a link to WP:ASSIGN, I found in a comment on a talk page somewhere, and I followed the link because I was unfamiliar with that page. This led me to a footnote, which led to a lengthy discussion regarding how this editor came to be blocked and why. Based on that reading, I have to say that I have no objection to unblocking EJustice, but I am not seeing anything in EJustice's comments that make me comfortable about unblocking without leaving some appropriate bans in place, specifically a ban from organizing further class assignments on Wikipedia, and a ban from using Wikipedia as a soapbox.

I also have to say I object to EJustice's desire above to exclude anyone not previously involved; I think, rather, that a discussion would benefit from the previously uninvolved editors whose views aren't colored by past involvement. ~Anachronist (talk) 00:31, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Anachronist, is your concern about who is involved in the conversation about what happened and led to the ban, or about who contributes to deciding an appeal? I offered to talk with EJustice 1-on-1 as the previous discussions looked like him being addressed by dozens of editors at once, with differing views, and seemed to be unhelpful in structure. I wanted the discussion public specifically so it would be useful for others to examine when any appeal happened – which is why I have not and will not be holding an off-wiki conversation despite that being potentially more productive / efficient. I sought a dedicated sub-page of user space as it would allow talk page comment from watchers without interjecting, but that is not possible under his ban. Any appeal will go to WP:AN (most likely) and be public and open to all. In fact, uninvolved commenters will be particularly valued there. I have promised EJustice nothing but to try, bringing a knowledge of WP and academia. I am willing to accept that his intentions are good and to work to help him to understand WP perspectives and policy. If an appeal is lodged, I will offer my perspective from our discussion but hope that EJustice's views and changed understanding will speak for themselves. I am not an admin and cannot unblock EJustice, nor will I ask for him to be unblocked other than by offering support at an appeal where everyone can contribute. I don't know if any appeal will be successful, nor whether I will be willing to support such a request – that's all in EJustice's hands. Does that address your concerns, Anachronist? Does this match your understanding, EJustice? As someone aware of the background, does this seem reasonable / accurate to you, Jytdog? Thanks to all. EdChem (talk) 05:59, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

That matches my understanding of what you offered and what EJustice accepted, EdChem. I changed the header of this section from "appeal" as that was a miunderstanding and seems to be furthering that misunderstanding as it lingers. All you did was offer to talk on-wiki with EJustice to review what happened. Jytdog (talk) 14:59, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with what's been said in this section...pinging EdChem to get started fully. EJustice (talk) 18:59, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

EdChem / EJustice discussion

This section contains the discussion of the events leading to EJustice's community-imposed block. Editors other than EJustice and EdChem are requested to comment only in the designated talk section(s).

Administration

This section is meant for covering the practicalities of this discussion, like when we will be available, what to cover next, etc.

What we need to cover

EJustice, perhaps you would like to outline here what you think we need to cover, expanding on your A, B, C above or whatever? Then I'll add what I have been thinking about. EdChem (talk) 23:31, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

EdChem, here is the original outline I suggested for our discussion:, which I think remains about right from my perspective:

A. My behavior...

1. In your view, what are the reasons for the block? (stack ranked ideally) As I think you know lots of reasons given, none really clearly identified as higher or lower priority. It would be great to get your experienced view of the key "charges." I won't hold you responsible for others' views and, of course, I'd guess that they will be sorely tempted to weigh in with their own prioritization. But I'd rather focus on yours as a simplifying strategy.

2. What behaviors did I engage in that violated WP policy or culture? same caveats as for question 1.

B. Students' behavior and interactions with WP editors...

1. How badly did students violate WP rules and policy if at all? My sense here is that, because of the community's perception of their topic and/or my behavior, they were accused of POV and subject to rapid deletion and harsh critiques, rather than discussion and good editing by the community.

2. How badly did non-student editors violate WP rules and policy if at all?

C. The role of the topic itself, environmental justice, in coloring how this played out....

1. My sense is that a big piece of what happened here has to do with a fundamental distaste and/or misunderstanding of environmental justice as a field of knowledge and inquiry with similar coloring for discussions of racism and discrimination. For example, does any discussion of environmental justice automatically fall under discretionary sanctions of post-1932 American politics? If so, why? You don't need to know a lot about this, but it would be worth looking at the nature of the edit histories and rationales deployed on articles to illuminate this.

2. How to create neutral information that serves real people not traditionally thought of as Wikipedia users? Obviously all information serves somebody, but my sense again is that knowledge that serves people not traditionally understood to use an encyclopedia (perhaps because they know they are not supposed to for various reasons) can trigger a reaction by those who've defined the boundaries and appropriateness of its use. Here we could discuss a few hypothetical or real scenarios.EJustice (talk) 06:27, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

The WP environment in which this discussion is occurring

EJustice, you wrote a while back that:

I'm open to any other ideas. If you like my outline, can you start us on topic A (my behavior)? I doubt we'll be "allowed" to discuss C, so let's leave that to last. Note that, from my perspective, this is a tough environment -- We start exploring our conversation (not even having it) and an editor has already jumped in to limit it, and another has expressed skepticism that it could work at all. As we start the conversation about what went wrong, we are reminded that my talk page is "not a free space where [I] can discuss whatever [I'd] like or whatever people would ask [me]," presumably because there's some hint of that already? Not sure we'll get very far under such reactivity/strictures, but let's try.

Finally, I AM concerned about our discussion being rehashed in venues where I am blocked, as has already started to happen even though we're not even getting to the meat of the matter yet. If that happens, can we take this off-Wiki for a bit? Any other ideas?

I'd like to make a few comments here so you are familiar with my perspective and so you know that I am aware of your concerns:

• I don't think we need to have a discussion that addresses only one issue at a time so long as the issues are covered in a sensible order and don't overlap too much. For example, talking about specific actions of yours can sit comfortably along side discussing policy confusion / understanding.
• Regarding Jytdog's comment: There are some editors who have spent a lot of time fighting people trying to use WP for advocacy, and there are sadly many examples where someone with an agenda produces a huge amount of disruption and clean up work. There is nothing wrong with being passionate about an issue but a huge problem if that means you can't be objective and dispassionate in editing. There is skepticism because you have certainly acted as an advocate at times but I am hoping the academic side of you can moderate that passion to edit positively. If your goal is to push a point of view no matter what WP policy says, then this process is doomed to fail. I am acting because I believe that may not be the case and that you deserve the chance to develop into a productive and valued member of the community. You might be interested to know that we have an award for editors who have been indefinitely blocked and subsequently produce an FA-standard article... that group could include you at some future time.
• Like any community, our members span a great variety of backgrounds, styles, and personalities. Some are very blunt and direct in their comments, but generally are also fair. I think that if someone like Jytdog sees progress in you and was willing to discuss or support an unblock, we'd be around the point where an appeal was worth considering. There are some editors who are well known and you can only learn their styles and nature with time.
• The "not a free space" comment is definitely a hint, but it's about keeping the discussion on track. If we were to have a long discussion of environmental justice issues, or worse I was to make article space changes based on your suggestions, that would be getting into proxying for a blocked editor and that would be unacceptable. So long as we stay related to your block and what happened, there are plenty of fair admins who will support the discussion being allowed to continue. Pay attention to the clarification that Fram left. Fram is very direct and blunt in his communications. He can be infuriating at times, but he has considerable respect in the community because his motivations are the best interests of the encyclopaedia and he is right far more often than he is wrong. He tends to the stricter side when taking actions, but he is also generally fair. I don't think the purpose of the hint was to hamper or sabotage the discussion but rather it was to remember that talk page access while blocked is available for purposes related to being unblocked, and was meant as a firm but well intentioned reminder that the topic is not how to get as much material on environmental justice into article space nor to right any perceived injustices relating to content in what happened.
• An off-wiki discussion is something I want to avoid, and I would need a really good reason to vary from my view that it should not occur between us. If such took place, any appeal could be diverted to what was said off-wiki, or raise concerns that I have coached you on what to say. If there was any off-wiki communication, I would feel ethically obligated to state that such had occurred in any comment I made at an appeal and to make some disclosure of its content. I truly think that it is better for both of us that any appeal be able to state that all discussion is visible here to any and all. Doing this off-wiki would be more efficient and faster, but it is not consistent with the WP ethos that things should be done in private only in those cases where public discussion is inappropriate.

Does this address your concerns? Any follow-up questions? I have pinged Fram and Jytdog above as I don't think it is appropriate to talk about someone behind his or her back. As such, I think it is fair to invite either or both of them to comment in this section (rather than the separate "talk" section below), if they so wish. EdChem (talk) 00:21, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

EdChem All of what you write makes sense and I agree. I still don't have a lot of faith that there will not be rush to judgements about our very discussion, but, with your help, we can keep them to the sections you've assigned them and stay on course to have a rational, open, and proper discussion of the issues at hand. EJustice (talk) 06:22, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

EdChem I do have a question about what you said above around off-wiki discussions...I am happy to refrain from any off-wiki discussion. Did you mean that you would also not have any on this topic, or just not any with me? Thanks! EJustice (talk) 01:43, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

That's a good question. I meant avoiding off-wiki discussion with you, but you raise a fair point. I can see reasons to have off-wiki conversations with others, to address concerns without interrupting our discussion, for example, but it could be unfair to you to be excluded from any such discussions. I can say that I have had no off-wiki conversations about you or these discussions in recent times. There may have been some around the time of your ban, though I don't recall any at present. I have no plans for off-wiki conversations, and I ask that contact / conversation with / from anyone to me be kept on wiki unless there is a very good reason for it to private. If there is any off-wiki conversation, I'll disclose to you that it has happened and the topic so that you are aware and informed. Is that satisfactory? EdChem (talk) 11:54, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

That's perfectly satisfactory to me...Thanks! EJustice (talk) 00:53, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Administration talk section

Editors other than EJustice and EdChem wishing to comment on the administration discussion above are asked to place their comments in this section.

• Thanks for creating a section. I am just writing here to say that I have no plans to chip in, unless I am directly asked something by one of you. Good luck! Jytdog (talk) 01:34, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Topic 1: My Behavior

1. In your view EdChem, what are the reasons for the block? (stack ranked ideally) As I think you know lots of reasons given, none really clearly identified as higher or lower priority. It would be great to get your experienced view of the key "charges." I won't hold you responsible for others' views and, of course, I'd guess that they will be sorely tempted to weigh in with their own prioritization. But I'd rather focus on yours as a simplifying strategy.

I think this is where the block was discussed for reference sake. This is another location where a prior attempt to block was rejected but the conversation also covered some key issues in depth.

2. What behaviors did I engage in that violated WP policy or culture? same caveats as for question 1.EJustice (talk) 07:02, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Moved from prior section so that it's in the right placeEJustice (talk) 01:22, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

EJustice, I think these are good questions but I am not sure that your behaviour is a sensible starting point. The problems started with an assignment inconsistent with encyclopaedic content, ran into a myriad of policy issues, and escalated quickly. Some of the rapid escalation was the frustration in the community about the number of previous classes that have created mess, which is not your fault. Some was fear due to the size of your class and the potential scale of the clean up. Some was perceived intransigence from each side... rather than anything collegial, the exchanges at times looked like people shouting past each other and taking each unhelpful response as proof of malice – you seeing editors undermining / sabotaging your assignment and us seeing a disregard for encyclopaedic content. Student editing can be very valuable, but it typically is not. When you understand why this is the case, I think you'll see more of what went wrong. The problem was not the topic, though you may not believe that. It may be that the WP coverage of the topic is woeful, or it may be excellent... I have no idea. But I do know that Wikipedians have a well developed sense of how encyclopaedic content should look and some of that is quite different from the academic mindset, and content perceived as advocacy triggers a strong response. Short version: there was no way the students could have avoided policy problems and no response from you could have saved what I see as an approach that was doomed from the start. Your response certainly led to your getting banned, but it is sad you weren't told (or didn't appreciate) why this was a disaster waiting to happen. EdChem (talk) 12:13, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

EdChem Thanks and glad to be into a conversation. So, what I do understand from what transpired is that it a lot of Wikipedians share your view that it takes more practice than students typically have to initiate articles that meet the neutrality standards of Wikipedia. That view is not unanimous, but was a clear thread in the negative evaluations of my behavior and that of my students.

But here's what WikiEdu says about "classic assignments" for classes:

This is the “classic” Wikipedia writing assignment, and it's likely the one you're here for. Students work individually or in small groups to create or expand a Wikipedia article on a given topic. They can research and write an article from scratch or expand an existing article.

And here's what I said about the assignment in my syllabus (in addition to requiring that students follow the WikiEdu training and curriculum and were graded on their adherence to said training, and in addition to the class having four Teaching Assistants in communication with WikiEdu and meeting with students 3x/week):

Build neutral sources of information for general audiences (Wikipedia), and explore what neutrality means under controversial circumstances and the value of evidence-based, citation-supported discussion.

As various trouble spots developed, WikiEdu advised us to shift some of the content to be expansions of existing pages, and students did so to no noticeable diminishment in deletion and reverting of their content. Hence the conclusion I reached, and the one reached by some other Wikipedian observers that the topic itself was triggering to the editorial community.

The initial charge in the ban seems to support this view:

EJustice used WP as a WP:SOAPBOX to campaign for environmental justice and against the plans and actions of the Trump administration, amplified through 180 meatpuppets via the Education Program;

No question I was triggered too as you suggest above...but all triggers are not equal. Triggers experienced by or about historically under-represented groups, like women, people of color, etc... relate to embedded power asymmetries that an ethical community should seek to correct. Most of my efforts as the instructor were to try to invite such ethical behavior. I am a newbie to Wikipedia but was super-encouraged by such basic Wikipedian principles as WP:BOLD (which is mentioned in the trainings). I was flabbergasted by the hostility of respondents and super-proud of my students' relative calm in the face of this hostility.

Perhaps we can use as a test of our conversation whether, on each point, it moves us in the direction that an appeal process would consider legitimate.

• My read of your views on at least this one point is that I need to recognize that mass student editing could be considered bad behavior and commit to never doing it again or at least doing it in a far more modest way.
• If, on the other hand, my view that the editorial community's reaction was heavily influenced by the subject material holds, that rationale for lifting the ban will fail as inadequate to the charge made.

There is clearly some ground between these two extreme positions, but where do you think it lies? EJustice (talk) 01:53, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

PS: I think that, starting with your note above this whole conversation belongs under the Topic 1 section header. If you agree, feel free to move it! EJustice(talk) 01:55, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

EJustice, please let's try to keep this as non-judgemental / on an even keel as we can. I should point out that I have not previously read the WikiEdu advice, so pointing me to links there is helpful. Having had a quick look at the case study, I am surprised to see that some important advice is missing or occurs quite late in the piece.

So, what I do understand from what transpired is that it a lot of Wikipedians share your view that it takes more practice than students typically have to initiate articles that meet the neutrality standards of Wikipedia. That view is not unanimous, but was a clear thread in the negative evaluations of my behavior and that of my students.

Actually, I think starting an article from scratch can be a suitable task. Neutrality is an issue but one that can be fixed and the topic can strongly indicate how much of a problem this is likely to be – the more controversial the topic, the more likely neutrality is to be challenged, and the more likely vested interests will try to push a POV and sabotage neutrality and / or the authors will bring a POV and struggle with neutrality. However, there is a problem that comes before neutrality, and that is notability. As best as I recall, there were topics which your students were working on that lacked independent notability, which means that the only solution under WP policy was deletion.

What do I mean? I mean topics like environmental justice AND some particular policy of the Trump administration where there were plenty of sources on EJ and plenty on the policy but none that actually applied EJ to the policy... in which case the article would be WP:OR or WP:SYNTH but, at base, they lack WP:N. In other words, there are few or no sources that establish the notability of the topic that is the intersection of EJ and the Trump policy. WP:AND explores this area further. The WikiEdu case study doesn't get to this until week 8, as far as I can see, which is far too late. There were topics in your assignment that should not have got past the proposal stage.

This is also a reason that the experience of the instructor is important. Establishing WP:N with suitable references is a sensible early step, but the reviewer needs to know to check not only that the sources are reliable and relevant to the topic, but that they establish notability of the topic – not of different aspects but of the core topic in its own right. EJ is notable. Trump administration policies are notable. Applying EJ principles to policies are NOTnotable unless reliable sources have explicitly discussed the application. This is true both as a stand-alone article and as a section of an article on whatever policy might be involved. This gets into one of the biggest challenges for assignments on WP. Showing that you can apply principles to a new situation, that potential implications are recognised and identified, that sources can be brought to together to support a novel argument... all of these are important / desirable skills in a student and a demonstration of critical thinking, but none of them are appropriate for writing or editing encyclopaedic content.

Neutrality of new content is an important goal, but it can be addressed through editing... but no amount of editing can fix a notability problem. Articles should not be deleted for neutrality reasons, but deletion is the only solution to a non-notable topic. Articles on EJ applied to individual circumstances may be important, they may be interesting, they may be worth writing about... but until there are sources to support them, the articles cannot be hosted on WP.

You mention that your guide refers to the importance for students to explore what neutrality means under controversial circumstances and the value of evidence-based, citation-supported discussion, and that is certainly a laudable goal. However, the "evidence-based, citation-supported discussion" is not the same as an academic argument where synthesis and original research are appropriate, welcome, and even desirable. I have no doubt that it is possible to describe EJ with high quality sources and write a persuasive exploration of a Trump policy in light of EJ principles, drawing on high quality sources of other cases, and produce an essay worthy of high marks, but such is not a policy-compliant WP article.

As various trouble spots developed, WikiEdu advised us to shift some of the content to be expansions of existing pages, and students did so to no noticeable diminishment in deletion and reverting of their content. Hence the conclusion I reached, and the one reached by some other Wikipedian observers that the topic itself was triggering to the editorial community.

If the problem was that the content was SYNTH / OR, then moving it to other articles does not address the problem. WikiEdu may not have given you good advice in this regard. I understand how you came to see hostility to EJ from the community, but there are plenty of topics on WP which are not held in high regard by Wikipedians, but are recognised as notable and included. I can't speak for everyone you encountered, but there are editors who I respect and who I believe are motivated by policy concerns. Do you see what I mean by problems with the design of your assignment?

:No question I was triggered too as you suggest above...but all triggers are not equal. Triggers experienced by or about historically under-represented groups, like women, people of color, etc... relate to embedded power asymmetries that an ethical community should seek to correct. Most of my efforts as the instructor were to try to invite such ethical behavior. I am a newbie to Wikipedia but was super-encouraged by such basic Wikipedian principles as WP:BOLD (which is mentioned in the trainings). I was flabbergasted by the hostility of respondents and super-proud of my students' relative calm in the face of this hostility.

Part of the reason for the strength of the responses you received was that your priorities came across as promoting understanding of EJ, righting historical wrongs, defending your assignment and students, and only after these considering the policies set up to support the production of encyclopaedic content. The first two of these are noble goals but have lead to many problems on WP, where they are discussed in WP:ADVOCACY and WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. The more you are seen pursuing these goals, the more you remind editors of prior problems in these areas. Perhaps this is not fair, but it is human and understandable, just as your defensiveness / protectiveness of your students was natural. I don't want to get into a debate about the importance of EJ, because it is irrelevant – the issues are how to edit about it in a policy compliant way, assuming that the sources support it. However, as a comment on historically under-represented groups who have suffered disadvantage, as a gay man I am well aware of how power asymmetries have led to mistreatment and disadvantage.

My read of your views on at least this one point is that I need to recognize that mass student editing could be considered bad behavior and commit to never doing it again or at least doing it in a far more modest way.

Mass student editing has great risks of going wrong, so I think WikiEdu should discourage large courses for first-time instructors. I won't tell you what you should or should not say in an appeal, that's for you to decide... but I would advise anyone considering a WP-based assignment that a small scale course / task might be a better vehicle for exploring than something large.

If, on the other hand, my view that the editorial community's reaction was heavily influenced by the subject material holds, that rationale for lifting the ban will fail as inadequate to the charge made.

I think the editorial community's reaction was far more influenced by you apparent advocacy of the subject material and lack of understanding of / appreciation of policy than it was about the subject material itself. EdChem (talk) 11:41, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

EdChem Thanks for this great and detailed reply. Please also know that I also want this conversation on an even keel. (You mentioned earlier that something was "sad" -- don't sweat it...this is not an emotional discussion for me. I've been working on racism for a few decades and am used to discussing it and issues that intersect it -- like the ability to publish diverse types of content, encyclopedic, policy-making, editorial, academic -- for that whole time.)

Let me start by making a brief list of the topics you raised and I'll fill my thoughts in under them as I have time:

* Notability (WP:N)

The folks at WikiEdu and I discussed notability quite a bit. The one time I can recall notability being challenged was for this whopper of an article/title: Environmental justice and coal mining in Appalachia and that article survived that challenge. In the editorial challenges we were facing WP:POV were far more commonly raised as issues. No topic proposed by the students were allowed unless there was substantial, reliable and significant sourcing available for the topic in popular sources, academic sources, legal sources, etc... So the topics were well screened for notability. Based on your points and those we discussed with the WikiEdu folks, I think there are two dimensions that came up and remain to be considered re: the WP:N point:

1. Why not make the contributions as part of existing articles rather than risk being deemed not-notable as stand-alone articles?

2. How to cover a specialized topic (like environmental justice, women, and pesticides if there is not a scaffolded article about women and pesticides already)

The answer here, unfortunately, does get into the question of inherent bias in knowledge production. If a forum, like Wikipedia, historically under-represents certain topics and populations (lots of well documented evidence on this point), then the under-represented topics and populations have an extra hurdle to cross. They have to conform to existing topics, structures, and taxonomies that, although historically exclusionary, are enforced as the structures into which the under-represented topics and populations must fit. An example...It is impossible to separate land tenure in the United States from racism and genocide. But land tenure is notable on its own and there is an article for it. Should racism and genocide be sections under the land tenure article or should they stand alone? Clearly the latter because a) the topic of racism and land tenure is notable on its own and b) discussing land tenure without discussing racism violates WP:NPOV. Rather than litigate that point (and maybe this is a copout), it strikes me that an encyclopedic approach allows for the best, neutral article about land tenure to co-exist with the article about land tenure and racism.

So, to the extent WP:N was an issue for students in the class, I think it's hard to avoid how notability is intertwined with bias and/or the culture into which one is trying to introduce a "notable" subject. Notability, simply put, is inherently a judgement call. By the criteria in WP:N the topics the students chose generally passed that test. But the evaluation of that was complicated by the fact that they were diving in on topics that had not been covered at a more general level (no article on "coal mining in Appalachia" existed before they wrote the one on "coal mining and environmental justice in Appalachia" -- both notable topics). Is it ok to "bias" the creation of neutral articles so that the topic immediately covers the material relevant to traditionally under-represented groups and ideas? If it's not ok, then we are de facto reinforcing the original bias. If it is ok, it adds an additional burden to those documenting the more general issue ("coal mining in Appalachia") to catch up. Since the bias is there, that additional burden doesn't bother me. Unless it's used as an excuse to unreasonably block work that, consciously or not, starts to redress the under-representation. EJustice (talk) 04:12, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

One (but only one!) reason for this conversation -- does it usefully illuminate whether the ban should be lifted? -- Notability didn't come up as part of the ban process but was definitely a deeper topic we discussed a lot among the students and the WikiEdu folks, so I'm glad we covered it!

* Original Research (WP:SYNTH & WP:OR)

Totally agree with you here and there were cases where the students did have WP:SYNTH in their work. You note the following based on the quote from my syllabus:

However, the "evidence-based, citation-supported discussion" is not the same as an academic argument where synthesis and original research are appropriate, welcome, and even desirable.

Which I agree with. Re: WP:SYNTH, if students engaged in "evidence-based, citation-supported discussion" which led to synthetic conclusions, they were wrong. If they did what the syllabus said:

Build neutral sources of information for general audiences (Wikipedia), and explore what neutrality means under controversial circumstances and the value of evidence-based, citation-supported discussion.

they were adhering to good WP practice, right? The syllabus should more clearly have stated that synthesis of published material was inappropriate in the WP context. So, for example, DON'T state that the Trump Administration's loosening of water pollution rules would hurt communities of color just because we know that the rules have been loosened AND that they were loosened disproportionately in communities of color. DO state that if there are newspaper articles in those communities or academic research or TV interviews on the damage to communities of color. Is that a good summary of the issue here? Thanks!EJustice (talk) 20:46, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

* Advocacy (WP:ADVOCACY & WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS)

EJustice (talk) 01:37, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Topic 1 talk section

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